There is an increasing demand for long-range communication systems to connect seafloor observatories spread over large portions of the earth-ocean system. Ocean observatories are deployed at the seafloor and connected by cable or buoy to surface networks. These seafloor observatories may be located many hundreds of kilometers off the coast of the nearest shore station and may be positioned at depths of over 5000 meters. Typically, the observatory has one or more network connections to shore stations through which data collected from the seafloor observatory may be passed onto the Internet and which may serve seafloor instruments with power and control commands. However, these are dedicated connections and do not offer any options for reconfigurable long-range connection of a seafloor observatory to another seafloor observatory, or another shore station.
Accordingly, there is a need for an easy to deploy underwater communication system that is readily reconfigurable.